


the butterfly effect

by coffeesuperhero



Category: Jurassic Park (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-22
Updated: 2011-12-22
Packaged: 2017-10-27 18:06:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/298555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coffeesuperhero/pseuds/coffeesuperhero
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Life finds a way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the butterfly effect

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Muir_Wolf](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Muir_Wolf/gifts).



> AU after the first movie. Happy Yuletide!
> 
> My betas and hand-holders, Miabicicletta and Leiascully, deserve all the awards. Extra snaps to Mia for the lowdown on the Bay Area, and for steering me towards [The Bird](http://www.albatrosspub.com/).

A few weeks after they get back from Isla Nublar, they have dinner, just the three of them.

There's a card on the table when they arrive. Inside are twenty crisp one-hundred dollar bills and a handwritten note that tells them to _spare no expense_ on their meal.

"Hammond," Alan says, shaking his head. He hands the card to Ellie. Her eyes widen when she sees the bills, and Ian leans around her, peering over her shoulder to read the card.

"Too many lawsuits to count, a multi-billion dollar company on the verge of bankruptcy, and he leaves us two grand for dinner," Ian laughs. "Typical."

They eat, they drink, and they generally avoid the unpleasant events that brought them together, though halfway through his third glass of whiskey, Ian does ask them if they took the settlement InGen offered.

"We haven't decided," Alan says.

"Well, I told them what they could do with it. It's, what do you call it, it's hush money, I won't have it," Ian says, pounding the table. "People died as a result of their arrogance, their complete disregard for the violence of life. Their families, they should know the truth of that arrogance."

Ellie takes his whiskey glass from him before he sloshes it onto the table cloth. She studies it thoughtfully for a moment, then drains the contents. Ian raises his eyebrows at Alan, but Alan only shrugs.

"We're scientists," she says, setting the glass back on the table. "We try to look at things objectively. How can we do that if we have to disregard everything we learned on that island? I don't want to do that. I don't even know that I _can_."

"I don't want to talk about it," Alan sighs. "I just want to go back to Montana."

They pay for the check themselves. Outside, Alan slips Hammond's money into a donation box for a children's charity. Ellie says nothing, but she smiles at him and squeezes his hand.

Ian suggests they hit up a bar, and they wind up at a little place around the corner from the restaurant, tucked into a table in the back.

"You know-- well, of course you don't, I'm about to tell you-- but when I was, ha, a very poor grad student, I thought about flipping academia the proverbial bird and opening a place like this instead," Ian says, gesturing around the room with his glass of whiskey. "Call it, ha, State of Disorder, something like that."

"You could have served drinks called The Butterfly Effect," Ellie says, and Alan rubs his hand across his face and shakes his head. "You drink it and somewhere in the world, someone else gets a hangover!"

"Ha!" Ian laughs. "Good one."

"So why don't you do it now?" Ellie asks. Underneath the table, she steps lightly on Alan's foot, and he shifts in his seat and attempts to school his features into something a bit more friendly.

"Too many variables," Ian says, as though this should have been patently obvious.

"Too bad," Alan says, lifting his glass to his lips. He stops halfway and tips his glass toward Ian. "I'd like to see what you could do with a drink called Concept of Attraction."

"Doctor Grant, I could never have predicted you had a sense of humor," Ian says. "You'll be a scholar of chaos theory before we even get our next round."

"A bar does seem like the best place to learn about chaos theory," Alan says. "Especially the way you teach it."

"The more you drink, the more you understand it?" Ellie laughs.

They clink their glasses together.

"To chaos theory and the cretaceous period," Ian proposes.

"To unpredictable and unlikely friendships," Ellie adds.

"To life," Alan says quietly. "It always finds a way."

"Hear, hear," Ian says.

 

\+ + + +

Two weeks after they explain that there's no way they can take the money, Hammond sends them a very apologetic letter explaining why he won't be able to keep his promise and fund the dig for a further three years.

Alan curses and tosses the letter back on the table, dust from the dig wafting through the air.

He wants to stay in the field; field work is all he's ever wanted to do, but finding any type of funding at this point in anybody's fiscal year will be damn near impossible and he knows it.

"We're fucked," he says.

"There are grants we can apply for next year," Ellie's saying, but her eyes meet his and they both sigh. "Yeah, you're right. We're fucked. What do you want to do?"

"Drink," Alan says, and she frowns. "We need to tell the team."

She opens a cabinet and pulls out the bottle of bourbon he's been saving. "Let's go."

\+ + + +

Thanks to a tip from Ian, they luck into gigs at UC Berkeley. California is having yet another funding crisis, and the threat of university cuts has people running for the hills, cashing in early retirement. It's not much in the way of job security-- the head of their department reminds them almost constantly that any day could be it-- and they'd both rather be in the field, but some work is better than no work at all, and their students are mostly eager and bright. Alan has his classes well-trained by the end of the first day, and everyone knows better than to ask about the whispered rumors of an island where dinosaurs still rule the earth.

"How did they even find out? I thought InGen paid everyone off. Except us, of course," Alan complains one night over dinner with Ellie and Ian.

"Perhaps, ah, like life, the truth will find a way," Ian says mysteriously, and that's all he will say on the subject.

The next morning, Ian appears on a talk show and tells the whole horrendous story. Two weeks later, the university revokes his tenure, but he soldiers bravely on, determined that the truth will still find a way.

"It's ruining your reputation," Ellie says, but Ian won't hear it.

"Ah, ah, ah, the truth will set you free, Doctor Sattler," he insists.

"But it won't pay your mortgage," Alan says, and Ian opens his mouth to reply, then closes it again, thinks for a moment, and raises his coffee cup to Alan.

"Well, I'll drink to that," he says.

\+ + + +

When he's not busy giving interviews or writing articles about what happened on Isla Nublar, Ian is drinking with Alan, who is glad for the occasional excuse to avoid grading or answering questions from undergrads. Ellie joins them when she can, but she's working on a project exploring prehistoric pollen and she puts in quite a few long hours in the lab.

"You did say she was tenacious," Ian says, when Alan explains why he's alone.

"You still have no idea," Alan says, a smug smile crossing his face.

They alternate between two local bars, but Albatross, affectionately _The Bird_ , is their most frequent haunt: the bartenders are amused by their loud discussions about chaos theory and the meaning of life and which one of them Ellie likes more than the other, and on one memorable occasion, after a particularly nasty phone call from one of InGen's attorneys, Ian declares that their mission for the evening, if they should choose to accept it, which naturally they will, is to think up a drink called the Butterfly Effect and see if the bartenders will make it.

"This is perfect," Ian says, sipping on some rum-laden purple concoction that the bartender passes over.

"I'm willing to bet that you'll still be the one with the hangover in the morning," Alan tells him, but he raises his glass in toast anyway.

 

\+ + + +

Alan still wakes up shouting sometimes, the roar of a tyrannosaur in his ears. Usually Ellie is there, a comfort even when she's sleeping, but not tonight: she's at a conference, and he's alone.

The phone rings.

"Oh good, you can't sleep, either," Ian says. "Well, it's not good, it's actually pretty goddamn terrible, but it's fortuitous that you're awake. Well, from my point of view it's fortuitous--"

"Ian," Alan sighs, interrupting what he fears might become a thirty-minute monologue if he doesn't stop it. "What did you want?"

For the space of a few breaths, there's nothing but silence from Ian's end of the line.

"I can't sleep," Ian says finally, and Alan hears what he hasn't said: some nights there's just no rest for any of them.

"So I gathered," he grumbles, but the grumbling is more out of habit and fatigue than any actual malice, and he knows Ian will understand. He peers at the clock on the nightstand. "Bar's still open."

He doesn't even have to name the place; they go there so frequently now.

"See you in ten," Ian replies.

The Bird is quiet tonight, which is unusual but not unwelcome. They order their usuals.

"I'll tell you how much my life has changed," Ian says drunkenly, the liquor in his glass sloshing around. "Every time we have another damn earthquake, I'm not thinking about, uh, you know, plate tectonics or geology, I'm not getting in the doorway, I'm looking over my shoulder for the hungry t-rex that wants to have an Ian Malcolm appetizer before it goes on to terrorize the greater Bay Area, you know?"

Alan nods his head and pushes his empty glass around on the bar.

"Hey, here's a question for you," Ian says. He plucks a piece of ice from his glass and pops it into his mouth, talking around it. "Why the hell did you get out of the car? Did you think about what you were doing, or was it all just a blur, one minute you were in the car and one minute it was, oh, hey, here I am, Mister Tyrannosaur?"

"I thought about it. I had a theory; I wanted to test it. Wait, don't tell me," Alan says, shifting uncomfortably in his seat, "you're writing a new book on the unpredictability of survival instincts in disaster scenarios."

"Now, see, there's an good example of the unpredictability of the universe. Who would have predicted that you, a notable skeptic, would provide me with an idea for my next rhetorical foray into chaos," Ian says, and Alan rolls his eyes. Ian waves his hand wildly in Alan's direction. "Really, Alan, look, I just want to know the answer. Ha, listen to me, I'm assuming there is an answer. I would never have done that before."

"We're all changing," Alan agrees, thinking of all the late nights the three of them seem to be spending together and the handful of times they've all woken up in a jumble. He drops a few folded bills on the bar and jerks his head toward the door. "Come on, let's get out of here."

Ellie gets in early the next morning and finds the two of them passed out on the couch, Ian's head on Alan's shoulder, both of them snoring away. On the floor in front of them is an empty bottle of cheap malt liquor and a notebook covered in equations and badly drawn dinosaur cartoons. She covers her mouth with one hand and tries not to laugh out loud, then grabs a blanket from the closet and tosses it over them before heading off to unpack.

\+ + + +

Although he has his own apartment in the city, Ian becomes something of a fixture in their house, and finally, after he has occupied their couch for two weeks, they shuffle the unpacked boxes out of the spare bedroom and find a couch with a pull-out bed. He'll be gone for a weekend or so every once in awhile when one of his kids comes to visit, but after his family leaves he'll show up on their doorstep again, a six-pack of beer in one hand and a box of pizza in the other.

"We should really just give you a key," Ellie suggests, taking the pizza and waving him inside.

"Ha, sure, yes, 'til eviction do us part, or similar," Ian laughs, following her into the kitchen. He pulls a bottleopener from the drawer, opens a beer, and hands it to her. "I always have been irresistible to scientists."

Alan appears in the doorway of the kitchen. "No thanks. I can't speak for Ellie, but _I_ have no desire to be the next ex-Mrs. Ian Malcolm."

Ellie spits her drink across the room.

\+ + + +

Ellie will come home from classes to find the two of them sitting at the kitchen table, Alan scrawling out notes by hand and Ian pecking away at some new exposé on the evils of InGen's bioengineering projects. One of her colleagues starts to refer to the pair of them as "Ellie's boys," and she realizes that the term isn't that far from the truth after the third time they both come to pick her up for lunch.

She tucks a photo of the three of them into the corner of her bulletin board, smiles, and goes back to her research.

From anybody else's perspective, it's probably a strange relationship; for them, it's just life, and after all that's happened it's the simplest solution, and it's surprisingly easy and it's comfortable and it's _theirs_.

"Now, this is a perfect illustration of the butterfly effect," Ian says, gesturing around at the three of them. "No one could have predicted this. Think about it: a mosquito in the cretaceous period flaps its wings, and thousands of years later, you know, here we are, ah, doing, whatever it is that we're doing."

"Living," Ellie says simply, and Alan smiles over at her. "We're living."


End file.
